SUCKLING ON THE TEAT OF ABSURDITY

SUCKLING ON THE TEAT OF ABSURDITY: In an age when medical cannabis has become an accepted treatment for many maladies and the age when Reefer Madness is an old joke you’ve got to wonder what kind of idiots are populating the hall of the National Institutes of Health.

According to a press release (thanks to Big Island blogger Damon Tucker for the heads up)

The U.S. Health & Human Services Department’s National Institutes of Health has six discretionary grant opportunities to support research that focuses on the development of a medication to treat disorders related to the use of cannabis.

No this is not a joke. And what’s more it wants people to study only indigenous groups including “Native Hawaiians”.

This stuff is absolutely too bizarre to make up.

According to a “funding opportunity notice from the U.S. Health & Human Services Department’s National Institutes of Health” six $500,000 grants- for a total of $3 million- are available.

Applications may focus on the pharmacotherapy of one or various CRDs or clinical manifestations of the disorders. For example, research may focus on marijuana dependence or specifically on marijuana withdrawal. Clinical applications may include human laboratory studies to develop models for testing medications targeting single or multiple manifestations of the CRDs, and the interaction of cannabinoids with other medications, pharmacokinetic and/or pharmacodynamic studies of potentially therapeutic compounds.

Applications may also focus on the specific symptoms of the disorder such as withdrawal, craving or relapse, complications such as cognitive impairment, sleep disorders/disruption of normal rhythms or the clinical surrogates of their use such as depression and other mood disorders

The NIH has yet to fund a definitive study on the benefits of medical marijuana but presupposes nonsense like physical addiction replete with “marijuana withdrawal symptoms”- concepts disproven many years ago.

Your tax dollars at work. Anyone still looking for hope and change?